During the daytime I filmed Simona Noja’s performance with the room empty. Here is a teaser for the final film. I shot vertically as I find the horizontal frame of a television extremely unattractive for a dance solo, particularly in a room like the Eroica Sall in the Austrian Theatre Museum.

The end result will be two vertical frames side by side for an HD picture. We worked with a Sony VX2100 in Pal DV SD (DV standard definition 720 x 576 pixels 25 frames per second) with the camera mounted sideways (yielding a single image of 576 x 720, which makes up two vertical frames in the 720p version of HD (1280 x 720 pixels progressive scan 25 frames per second) with some room left over to make sure that essential shot information isn’t cut off on the sides.

The future of television in Europe and all over the world is HD and we made this film for HD to offer a much richer dance viewing experience. Two frames seems ideal to me for working with dance – which hasn’t been possible until now, due to the resolution limitations of video. With twice the resolution or more, HD lets us do this at last without using film (which is very expensive to shoot for dance, as one needs lots of footage). I have done similar experiments with SD before – Althea Frutex.

But even a single vertical shot is attractive for web viewing and gives a sense of the wonderful performance in exceptional surroundings. Somehow Simona managed to transform herself into Maria Callas and carry the emotions of both Violetta and Maria Callas herself in Ingeborg Tichy-Luger’s expressive choeography.

Enjoy!

Click to Open Film in New Window – Attention 64 MB download!

Alas, right now we are short of money for post-production and the immediate future of the HD version is in doubt (my own company Decadence Films is donating half of the post-production budget). Please donate a small amount now if you can and we will feature you in the credits and in a special thank you page on the film’s website (with a link if you would like)! We only need 100 donors.

For more pictures of Simona Noja as Maria Callas, please visit my friend photographer Anton Hoellersberger who took some wonderful photographs during the filming.